Monday, 12 September 2016

Back here I promised to have at the "study" commissioned by the Fetal Gore Gang that tries to deliver on its long-standing claims that shoving gory images in people's faces does anything but make them recoil and occasionally toss chocolate milk.

The study titled A Statistical Analysis on the Effectiveness of Abortion Victim Photography in Pro-life Activism was commissioned by the Canadian Centre for Bio-Ethical Reform (CCBR). The CCBR developed a survey — administered by the independent company Blue Direct — which targeted the population of geographic areas in which CCBR campaigns had been run using abortion victim photography. With a sample size of more than 1,700 respondents, the survey results are sufficient to gauge public opinion within a five-point margin, the study claims.

As a results oriented company, we’ll work with you while continuously testing and tweaking what we’re doing to ensure you get the best results.

I read the "study" (twenty minutes I'll never get back). My eyes were already crossed by the biased language and idiosyncratic categories when I got to page 20 and saw this table.

First, just try to make any sense of that. "Cultural impact" is a thing? Not in any sociology textbook I can find. Also "cultural impact" heading has some numbers, but the footer has some other numbers.

"Pro-life percentage points gained"? Is that like IQ points lost trying to make sense of this scientifically and statistically illiterate word salad?

And the "points gained" is 1.20% and the MOE of the study is acknowledged at 5%?

Moronic.

The take-away: This is why Real Science™ requires peer review.

The conclusion: Come back, Fetal Gore Gang, when you can get this kind of crap published in a real scientific journal.

3 comments:

Anonymous
said...

I believe I received one of these polls. The research company rattled off their name so quickly it was unintelligible. The first call simply asked how you yourself - pro-choice, pro-life or undecided. I let this call go to voice mail and so did not answer the survey. The second call, a day or two later, asked that given the story on CTV about the graphic imagery, how would you identify yourself. Well,I hadn't seen the news cast but only the blind in Calgary haven't seen their stupid imagery so I answered the question. So if this is how they conducted their survey and they are drawing these conclusions from it, what they are really only measuring is the number of people in each camp who answered the call on those particular nights. The anti-choice are masters of bad science.